


Twice upon a Time

by ChaneenW



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e20 Small Potatoes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9445592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaneenW/pseuds/ChaneenW
Summary: Something was wrong.Mulder knew it even before he opened his eyes, slowly waking up to the warmth of the sunlight streaming in through the living room window. That seemed normal enough, as did the soft leather of the couch beneath him. Still, he felt uneasy. He knew by now to trust his gut when he sensed that things were off, and all of his senses were screaming at him right now.





	1. Chapter 1

Something was wrong.

Mulder knew it even before he opened his eyes, slowly waking up to the warmth of the sunlight streaming in through the living room window. That seemed normal enough, as did the soft leather of the couch beneath him. Still, he felt uneasy. He knew by now to trust his gut when he sensed that things were off, and all of his senses were screaming at him right now.

He lifted his head and looked around cautiously. His apartment looked exactly the same as always: simply furnished yet comfortably cluttered. After scrutinizing the room for several moments and failing to notice anything out of the ordinary, he let out an audible breath and shook his head, smiling to himself. Once again, he’d let his tendency toward paranoia get the better of him. Stretching slightly, he walked toward his bedroom to grab some clothes, but he didn’t get further than the doorway before stopping suddenly.

A cold ripple of anxiety shot through him as he stared uncomprehendingly at the stacks of boxes and papers where his bed once stood. But it wasn’t that his bed was supposed to be here; that wasn’t what was wrong, he realized. It was that _none_ of it was supposed to be in this apartment, including him. All at once, he remembered: he had gone to sleep last night in New Mexico, in the small rented room where he’d been staying for the past several months.

Mulder suddenly became lightheaded, nauseous, and he stumbled into the bathroom, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. He rinsed his mouth out and looked in the mirror at a relatively clean-shaven face instead of the six-day growth he expected to see. _What the hell is going on?_  

Dimly, he realized the phone was ringing and he ran towards it, glad for the distraction.

“Mulder.”

“Mulder, it’s me. Where are you?” The voice on the other end sounded weary and exasperated.

“Oh my God, Scully,” he murmured. He sat down and closed his eyes, overcome by a surge of emotion. He hadn’t been sure he’d ever have the chance to talk to her again.

“Yes, you’re late,” she grumbled. “If you couldn’t be here on time, you could have at least let me know, especially since you were the one who insisted that we had to be ready to leave by 7:00.”

He glanced at the clock that read 7:36. That explained the annoyance in her tone, and he was relieved to have figured out at least one mystery this morning. Only a hundred or so still remained. “Where are you?”

She sighed loudly in his ear. “The office. Where else would I be, bright and early on a Thursday morning?”

Mulder was silent for several seconds as he tried to process this information. The last he’d heard, she was teaching classes at the Academy in Quantico, but he supposed she could have been helping Doggett and Reyes with a case. Still, that didn’t explain why she would want to meet him somewhere that could risk his exposure. Before he left, they’d agreed on the protocol to follow for his safe return, and none of it included hanging out at a highly visible federal building.

“The office?” he asked finally.

“Yes, Mulder, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You might have heard of it,” Scully responded sarcastically. “Now, what time can you be here?”

Numbly, Mulder agreed to join her in thirty minutes and hung up the phone. He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and brushed his teeth, wondering why she hadn’t simply come to his apartment in the first place if she knew he was home. Or better yet, why weren’t they meeting at one of their previously designated safe points? Walking back out to the living room, he glanced around for his wallet and keys, not expecting any luck as he’d last seen them 2000 miles ago. There they were on the coffee table, though, right next to his government-issued badge and weapon.

The pit in his stomach grew larger as he processed the evidence. Even though he’d been fired from the Bureau over a year ago, he must have been somehow been reinstated without his knowledge. Which meant that Scully didn’t want to simply meet him at the office; she expected him to show up for work. He shook his head in disbelief and wondered if he were suffering from amnesia or some kind of delusional disorder. His only hope was that Scully would be able to make some sense out of everything, even if that meant inexplicably returning to the FBI. He glanced down at himself and then, with a sigh, ducked back into his bedroom to put on a suit.

 

*****

 

Mulder crept cautiously up to the employee entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover building before pausing uncertainly. He and Scully had taken Deputy Director Kersh’s warning seriously that his life was in danger as long as he remained in DC; in fact, that was the only reason he’d been able to leave her and their newborn son so many months ago. But on the phone, she’d acted as if nothing had happened. Was the threat gone? Would they actually be able to continue with their lives? Mulder’s confidence lifted as he thought of William. If Scully felt safe enough to ask him to come here, he would surely be able to see his son again as well.

On the other hand, this could all have been a setup, and he had to be prepared for that possibility too. For all he knew, he could have been threatened and forced to leave New Mexico. Maybe his enemies had drugged him, causing his memory loss, and then impersonated Scully’s voice to lure him to Headquarters. Perhaps once he arrived, there would be government officials, super soldiers, or worse waiting in ambush for him.

But the guard’s bored expression never changed while scanning his credentials, and as Mulder walked down the hall, nobody seemed to notice him, save for a few perfunctory nods in his direction as if his colleagues weren’t surprised to see him at all. He retraced the familiar steps down to the basement and hesitated at the closed door in front of him. The door that still read Fox Mulder as if in a weird homage to him. Taking a deep breath, he pushed it open and quickly glanced around the room, observing no immediate danger.

He quickly forgot everything else, however, once his eyes landed on Scully who was sitting at the computer, her head bent in concentration. Leaning against the wall for a moment, simply watching her, Mulder felt his eyes sting and he swallowed heavily, realizing just how lonely he’d been all of these months without her. Even though he hadn’t been sure of anything else that morning, he was now sure about at least one thing: he was home.

Scully appeared to be fully absorbed in her task and didn’t look up as he walked into the room. He strode up behind her chair and bent down, just about to wrap his arms around her shoulders and kiss her neck, when he suddenly caught sight of what she was working on and stopped short in confusion as certain words popped out at him from the screen:

_Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dr. Yonechi; Rapid freezing compound._

He was about to ask why she was looking at an old case file when he saw that she was in fact _writing_ the report in front of her, not just reviewing it. Scully continued tapping at the keys, and his eyes scanned the sentence as she composed it: “Agent Mulder’s theory on the nature of time travel…” Drawing in a sharp breath, he reread those last words: _time travel._ The woozy feeling that had sent him to the bathroom earlier that morning returned as he reluctantly looked at the bottom of the computer screen to observe the current date: 4/17/97.

1997? He stared intently at the numbers in bewilderment. No. It just wasn’t possible. But even as that thought automatically ran across his mind, he couldn’t help but recall everything from the morning that hadn’t added up: the stacks of boxes in his bedroom, the beard that had mysteriously disappeared overnight, the sign on the door as well as the nameplate on his desk that he was just now noticing. But…how? It was one thing to theoretically conclude that time travel was feasible based on what they’d observed while on the case but quite another to actually experience it. For starters, the science just didn’t allow it. A certain doctor with an undergrad degree in physics had even confirmed this for him.

He looked down at Scully, wondering if she had any idea just how bizarre the world seemed right now. She swiveled in her chair to return his gaze, and it was only then that he noticed that she was different too. She was thinner than he remembered, her facial features drawn more sharply. Her skin was also pale, almost translucent, and she looked tired, like she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a while.

But it was her eyes, her beautiful ice-blue eyes, which told him more than anything else that his suspicions about time travel were likely correct. They were carefully guarded, lending to her professional air the appearance of someone not wanting to give too much of herself away. So unlike the open and expressive gazes that he’d become accustomed to in recent years. This might have been Scully looking back at him, but it wasn’t _his_ Scully, whom he knew wouldn’t have hesitated to leap out of her chair and throw her arms around him the second he’d walked into the room.

After a few moments, she cleared her throat pointedly and he leaned back, realizing that he’d been staring too long and invading her personal space.

“Are we going or not?” she asked.

He gave her a blank look, and she rolled her eyes. “West Virginia?” she prompted. “You sounded very excited about it yesterday.” Then she regarded him more closely, this time with concern. “Are you feeling all right, Mulder? You look ill.”

She reached up to feel his forehead, and he couldn’t help but close his eyes at her touch. She might not have looked the same, and she might not have looked at him in the same way, but the way she touched him still felt exactly the same. He leaned slightly into her hand as she brushed it adeptly across his skin.

“Do you need to lie down?” she asked, frowning. “Maybe you should go back home.”

Mulder did feel like he needed to lie down, but he didn’t want to go home. He wasn’t willing to leave her, not when he’d just gotten her back. This past version of Scully might have been more reserved with him than he was used to, but he’d missed her too much to care. He was going wherever she was because as far as he could recall of what their relationship had been like five years prior, he reasoned his chances were extremely thin that if he were to leave due to illness she would offer to personally nurse him back to health.

“I’m fine,” he said, trying to look like he meant it.

His mind raced to catch up. She’d mentioned West Virginia, and they had just finished the time travel case, so that meant their current investigation featured Eddie Van Blundht and his shape-shifting, serial rapist ways. Mulder conceded that it wasn’t his first choice to spend what might be his only time-traveling adventure re-solving a case involving an insufferable loser. But then again it would also be easy, and with Scully by his side, perhaps even enjoyable. Besides, anything was better than the loneliness of his current existence, and there were definitely benefits to knowing what was going to happen as well. With that thought, he found himself almost looking forward to watching Eddie try to pull a fast one on him this time.

“Let’s get on the road,” he added, feeling more like himself than he had all morning.

 

*****

 

They were silent in the car as Scully looked out the window at the rain and Mulder drove, debating with himself whether or not he should tell her what was happening. It would make things a lot easier, but he wasn’t sure how she would take it. He felt certain that the Scully in his own time would have believed him; she’d become so much more open-minded over the years after she’d seen things she couldn’t explain through natural or scientific means. But he couldn’t be sure that this Scully wouldn’t have him committed to an insane asylum.

He glanced at her and decided not to say anything for now. Scully looked over at him at the same time and smiled as she briefly met his eyes.

“So, Mulder, tell me a bit more about this case.”

“Well…there have been a series of babies in this town, who have all been born with tails,” he began and then stopped, unsure as to what else he could tell her without solving the case right there. Thinking about how their conversation in the car had gone before, he realized the tabloid that she’d been reading the first time around was missing because it hadn’t crossed his mind to bring it. Things were already changing.

“Earth to Mulder,” said Scully, smirking. “I assume there’s more to it than that. Otherwise, this sounds like something the local health department could take care of.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Anyway, one woman who had such a baby has claimed that she was impregnated by…” He caught himself right before he said Luke Skywalker; no doubt she would have demanded that he turn the car around right away if he led with that. “…She thought an extraterrestrial might have had something to do with it,” he finished lamely.

“I _knew_ there had to be aliens involved when you were so mysterious and animated yesterday”, Scully said with an exaggerated sigh. “Please tell me we’re not investigating pregnant women who have been deluded into thinking they’re carrying alien fetuses.”

Mulder raised an eyebrow at her. “That could be an actual fear for some women, you know. Just because it hasn’t happened to _you_ doesn’t automatically make it delusional.”

“Just for the record, Mulder, I would never believe, or expect anyone else to believe, that my unborn child might be an alien,” she replied dismissively.

“Never say never, Scully.”


	2. Chapter 2

At the hospital, Mulder let Scully take the lead in questioning Amanda Nelligan, partly because he wanted to avoid accidentally giving himself away but mostly because he wanted to see the look on Scully’s face once Amanda started talking about Luke and his lightsaber.

As Scully began, he leaned back against the wall, taking the opportunity to observe her in action. But he soon forgot to focus on the interview itself as he became increasingly captivated by her professional demeanor. He watched her slip effortlessly into the role of FBI agent, and everything, from the cadence of her voice to the gestures she made, he recognized as pure Scully.

In fact, she looked so much like herself right now, the Scully that he missed, that it was hard for him to believe that if he were to walk across the room and sweep her up into his arms that she wouldn’t respond in kind. After all, he knew exactly how she liked to be kissed, deeply intense with his hands in her hair. He knew exactly how she liked to be touched, when he ran his hands over her body feather-light until she begged for more. He knew exactly how she liked to be—

“Mulder?”

He snapped back to attention. “Yes?”

Scully gave him a withering look. “Did you perhaps have anything to add?” She gestured to Amanda, who was singing the Star Wars theme song under her breath.

“No, I’d say we got it,” he replied and stepped quickly out of the room before she could see him break down in laughter.

He strode down the hall towards the nursery and noticed Eddie peering through the glass at his newborn daughter, looking for all intents and purposes like a proud father. Feeling a sense of déjà vu surge through him, Mulder wondered why he’d traveled back to this particular time. After all, Eddie’s case seemed like such an insignificant one, and even if it hadn’t gone perfectly the first time around, they’d still caught the guy. He shook his head in puzzlement as Scully walked towards him and finished a conversation on the phone.

“So, are you ready to fire up the Millennium Falcon and jump to hyperspace?” he asked.

“In your dreams, Chewie,” she shot back with a smile. “Actually, though, I think there might be something to this case after all. Coming?” 

Mulder didn’t even have to feign the look of surprise and delight on his face as he followed her out the door.

 

*****

 

As Scully and the health department official talked about chromosome anomalies, Mulder’s thoughts again turned to why this might have been happening to him in the first place. Had it been random? Was he supposed to do something specific? What was his endgame in all of this? He didn’t even know how to get back to his own time; it wasn’t like he’d arrived in a time machine he could crawl back into.

Perhaps the next time he woke up he’d be back in New Mexico, and he could keep trying to find answers that he was pretty sure he didn’t want to learn anyway. But maybe he wasn’t supposed to return at all. Maybe he would just live out his life over again as if the past five years had never happened. That might not be so bad, he mused. It could be an opportunity to do things differently. Better.

There were definitely things he’d change, of course. Staying away from invisible spacecraft in Oregon was pretty high on the list. He would also try and make a point to visit his mother more often. And what about the IVF process that had been so heartbreaking for both of them? His first instinct was to tell Scully to skip it, but he knew that wasn’t his call. If this really was a do-over, he’d have to tell her sooner rather than later that he’d found her ova that had been stolen during her abduction. Even if the ova weren’t viable, it wasn’t his secret to keep for another three years.

He wondered about the implications of that as they headed over to the OB-GYN’s office. Would she want to start the IVF process as soon as he told her? And if she did, would she still ask him to be her donor? Even though they both believed William had been conceived naturally against all odds, Scully’s request that he father her child had been one of the catalysts that had taken their relationship to the next level. But if she started now, he couldn’t be certain she’d feel close enough to him at this point to ask, and he wasn’t sure if he could stand by while she screened anonymous donors. 

“IVF is a really amazing scientific breakthrough, don’t you think?” Mulder asked, trying to sound casual.

“Mm-hmm,” Scully answered absently.

“All of this kind of got me thinking about it,” he said, indicating the building in front of where they’d just parked. “And, uh, I’d be willing to do it if, um, if my significant other wanted to.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m not sure what’s more surprising about that statement: the fact that you want children so much that you’re already convinced you’d do it or that you actually _have_ a significant other in this scenario.”

“I’m not opposed to being in a relationship,” he responded mildly. “In fact, I can be quite romantic when I want to be.”

“You?” Scully said with a snort. “I’ve seen cadavers with more romantic bones in their bodies.”

“Do I really seem that bad?” he asked, laughing. “Maybe that’s just because I haven’t found a woman who’s fallen for the Mulder charm yet.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ what you’ve been searching for this whole time?” she teased. “Here’s a suggestion: you might want to look somewhere besides sewers or caves or cemeteries or—“

“Thanks for the tip,” he interrupted. Damn, he’d gone too long without this.

“Just trying to be helpful,” she replied with a smile.

“Don’t worry, Scully, I have no doubt that I’ll eventually find the woman of my dreams. And when I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

Mulder glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t tell whether her slightly flushed complexion was in response to his comment or just from enjoyment at their banter.

She looked as though she wanted to say something more about his hypothetical woman but instead changed the subject. “We should probably go inside and see what we can find out,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt.

Mulder was still grinning when they got out of the car and walked up the steps behind another couple. The man turned to them in exasperation and said, “Oh, you too, huh?”

Turning back to gauge Scully’s reaction, he noted that although she glanced back at him, her expression betrayed nothing. Even so, he suddenly recalled a four course dinner at an expensive restaurant in Los Angeles a couple years back: Scully in a sexy black dress, tipsy on too much champagne, admitting between fits of giggles that she’d always loved it whenever people had mistaken them for a couple.

With that in mind, Mulder made sure to watch her carefully once they approached the mob gathering around the doctor, knowing that the others would assume they were another couple involved in the mix-up. But again, just as before, she was completely poised and as professional as ever. Slightly disappointed, he wandered down the hall to where he knew Eddie was working on a sink.

“Hey, Eddie,” Mulder greeted him as though they were old friends.

“Hi,” Eddie replied warily, standing up to face him. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Ghost of Christmas Future. Care to know what’s in store for you?”

“What are you talking about?”

Mulder continued conversationally, “Let’s just say you should probably avoid bending over like that in the coming months, especially without pulling up your pants first.”

“Are you making fun of my scar?”

Mulder smirked. “No, not exactly. But since you brought it up, I’m with the FBI and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

At those words, Eddie took off running down the hallway, and Mulder gamely chased him, marveling at how easy and straightforward life on the X-Files used to be.

 

*****  
  
  
After listening to Eddie suggest that he was a hero for helping women who couldn’t get pregnant by their husbands, Scully walked out of the interview room, motioning Mulder to follow her.

“What do you think?” he asked once they were alone.

“On behalf of all the women of the world, I seriously doubt this has anything to do with consensual sex,” Scully announced. “I think it involved some sort of Rohypnol rape.”

“No, definitely not consensual,” agreed Mulder. “In fact, I don’t think any of the women knew they were having sex with Eddie at all.”

“Right,” she said in disgust. “They were likely so drugged that they probably didn’t even realize what was happening.”

“That wouldn’t explain Amanda’s experience, though,” he reminded her. “She made it clear that she believed she was having sex with Luke Skywalker. I doubt that’s one of the known side effects of date rape drugs, Scully.”

“She’s obsessed with Star Wars and obviously open to the power of suggestion. If Eddie slipped her a drug that caused her to experience confusion or even hallucinations, he could have easily turned on the charm and pretended to be a familiar movie character to make it easier to rape her.”

“You think Eddie is charming?” he couldn’t resist asking. The vision of Eddie as himself and Scully on the couch together, mere inches away from kissing, was forever seared in his mind.

“Of course not. But if Amanda had been drugged, he could have appeared to be.”

“We agree that Eddie appeared as something he wasn’t,” Mulder replied, “but a date rape drug causes you to black out. It doesn’t bring your favorite fictional characters to life, even as a hallucination.”

He settled on the edge of a desk, and Scully reflexively moved closer to him so that they were almost touching, assuming their normal positions whenever they became passionate about their respective views. The familiar energy crackled between them, and he was finding it difficult to understand how he’d gotten anything accomplished back then.

 “I assume you have an idea, then?”

Mulder hesitated a little before deciding just to go ahead with it. “It’s similar to yours, but it doesn’t require drugs,” he suggested slowly, as if the idea were just occurring to him. “Perhaps Eddie is able to physically transform into anybody he wants to be, including movie characters.”

Scully crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a scathing look. “I’d love to see any evidence at all for that theory, Mulder.”

So much for trying to skip ahead in the case. “Just think about it for a second,” he pleaded. “It makes sense that if Eddie were able to appear as other people, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to have fathered all of those children without the women’s knowledge. They willingly would have gone to bed with Eddie if he looked like their husbands, no questions asked. Seeing is believing, after all.”

“But feeling is believing, too,” she pointed out. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that Eddie is able to create such an illusion. Even if each of those women saw a person in front of them who looked exactly like their husband, I can’t believe that’s all it would take to trick them. How could they touch their husbands, kiss them, and even have sex with them without knowing anything was amiss? How could they not know that the person closest to them in the world is not actually who he appears to be?”

“Because most people have rational minds like you,” he answered with a smile. “For instance, you expect me to be Mulder simply because I look like him, right? So even if I weren’t quite acting like myself one day, you wouldn’t automatically believe that I wasn’t really me. You would simply assume that I was having an off day. Think Occam’s Razor.”

“Funny you should mention Occam’s Razor,” she replied dryly. “What _is_ the simplest and most likely explanation in this situation? That a guy drugs women so he can rape them or that he shape shifts into their husbands so he can pretend he’s not raping them?”

“Shape shifting? Like the alien bounty hunters? Hmm, I don’t know, Scully. Not everything has to be connected to aliens, you know,” he said innocently.

She flashed him a sardonic smile. “Not everything has to be an X-File, either.”

“Oh, this is an X-File all right,” he murmured thoughtfully. “In more ways than one.”

“Well, we could do this all night,” she said, “but at this point, it doesn’t necessarily matter how he did it. We’ve still got enough to keep him in custody while we check it out.”

“Sure, let’s keep him overnight and look into it first thing in the morning,” Mulder replied, thinking ahead. He briefly played with the idea of keeping watch over Eddie so he couldn’t escape, but then what evidence would they have? The only way to prove Eddie was a shape shifter was to let him get caught doing it. “It’s already late, though, and I’m starving. Want to grab a bite to eat and call it a day?”

 

*****

 

As Mulder ate his burger, he mentally reviewed what had to be one of the oddest days of his life thus far. He still couldn’t quite believe that less than 24 hours ago, he had been sitting in a small room a couple thousand miles away, thinking about and missing Scully terribly. And somehow, here she was, right in front of him.

He had to admit that he was enjoying her company a lot; of course he still longed for his Scully, somewhere out there in 2002, but this version didn’t disappoint. For one, she’d made him laugh, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought anything was funny. And earlier, when she’d assumed his theories were unsubstantiated, she had still argued with the same passion, intelligence, and persistence that reminded him of why he’d fallen for her in the first place.

The more time he spent here, though, the more it became uncomfortably clear that Eddie hadn’t been wrong about him. He _had_ been a loser back then: too focused on searching for the big answers to see what was right in front of him. And although he’d been immediately attracted to Scully when they first met, had instantly respected her knowledge and expertise, and had come to quickly trust her with his life, he had to acknowledge that it had taken him longer than it should have to realize how much he loved her.

And how did she feel about him right now? He scrutinized her carefully, but it was impossible for him to tell. She seemed content to just be his partner and friend, but he also knew that she’d held her feelings in check for a long time, scared of getting too close to a man whose priorities meant that he might never be able to put her first. Even if she’d flirted with him a bit this afternoon, that was just some good-natured fun between friends, he rationalized. There was no way she’d fallen for him this early in their partnership.

As he pursed his lips, trying to remember the moment when he’d known for certain that she wanted more from him, she looked up from her salad and gave him a knowing smile. “You’ve been lost in your thoughts all day, Mulder. Still thinking about the case? I’m open to hearing about any more non-alien theories you might have.”

“No, I was wondering where life might take us in the next several years,” he replied honestly. “Do you ever think about the future?”

Instead of answering, Scully looked down at her lap, but not before he’d caught the look of distress that passed over her features.

_Shit_.

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he said awkwardly. “I wasn’t thinking…”

“No, it’s okay. I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t; she was afraid. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, wondering how he could have been so insensitive. The evidence was written all over her now that he knew what to look for, but he’d been so intent on trying to recognize his Scully within this version that he’d completely overlooked the realities that she was currently facing. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, obviously, but in his time her cancer had been long cured; it was no longer on his radar, no longer something that either of them had to worry about anymore. He wished more than ever that there was some way he could tell her what he knew so she didn’t have to be afraid to hope for the future.

“We’re going to beat it,” he said firmly, hoping it sounded like more than an empty promise.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “And anyway, it’s not your fight.”

The memories of that horrible time in their lives flooded his mind, and he vividly recalled how he’d been sure that he would lose her, and how he’d tried to mentally prepare to go on without her but came up empty, unable to imagine a future without Scully. Even back then he’d known: everything that happened to one of them affected them both.

“Of course it’s my fight, too,” he said quietly.      

She offered him a grateful smile, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. His first instinct was to comfort her, to rush to her side and pull her into his arms. But he was operating under different rules now, with different assumptions. It was too awkward with the table between them, with the food between them, with five years between them, and he couldn’t remember what was acceptable, what kind of reassurance she’d accept from him.

Caught between the present and the future, he remained paralyzed in his chair, letting the moment linger and suddenly feeling completely out of his depth. Why had he been so cocky as to believe he could just slip back into this life and pretend to be someone he wasn’t any longer? How could he have assumed he could enjoy this case and joke around with Scully, romanticizing the past as if it had been any easier? He shook his head with remorse. Their partnership had always been full of pain, and he had always been the cause.

The familiar riptide of guilt and helplessness pulled him under as he was reminded once again of what he’d managed to forget today: his situation back in his own time was uncertain and dangerous, and he didn’t have a way of knowing whether his Scully was actually safe now that he’d left. He had no way of helping her if she needed it. He didn’t even know when or if he’d ever see her again.

Scully looked at him in concern as they paid for the meal and left the restaurant, heading toward the motel. He barely registered her presence, though, still caught up in a mental web of anguish, berating himself for leaving in the first place, for leaving her vulnerable to their enemies, for leaving her alone to care for their newborn son. All of the despair that he’d tried to suppress suddenly overwhelmed him, despair that had begun affecting his ability to find the answers he sought. In recent weeks, he’d felt himself slide further into depression, which was just one more thing that weighed on his conscience. He was failing her; he was failing William.

As they left the motel lobby and walked out into the night air, Mulder struggled to block those thoughts and be present for Scully. But it was impossible when he knew that he had always been and would always be the reason for everything that happened to her; it was the price she paid for refusing to leave his side. Maybe this was why he’d been sent back here, he thought bitterly. Perhaps he was supposed to warn her to stay away from him in the future.

They stopped in the middle of the small motel courtyard, their rooms directly across from each other, and Mulder was just about to say goodnight and put the evening out of its misery when Scully suddenly turned to him with a smile and stuck out her fist. It seemed like some sort of peace offering, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do in response.

“The room on that side of the courtyard is next to the busy highway, and the one over there faces the woods,” she said by way of explanation.

And then he remembered. At some point in their partnership, they’d started playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and other similar games whenever they couldn’t decide on something, like whose turn it was to drive, or when there was an obvious disadvantage that one of them was going to have to put up with, like now.

“Come on,” she urged, nudging his chest lightly with her knuckles.

They played three quick games in a row that all ended in ties, and Scully looked up at him and grinned. “I didn’t know you were a mind reader.”

“That doesn’t happen to be one of my current super powers,” he replied with a half-smile. “Besides, if I could read your mind, I’d play to win.”

Scully won the fourth game, choosing scissors to his paper, and playfully pretended to use her fingers to chop his slowly so that their hands became entangled. Their eyes met and they both smiled. They’d also used the games, he knew, as an excuse to touch each other, to use that mode of communication before they were able to talk about their feelings. _Don’t worry_ , she was telling him now. _It’s not your fault_. She squeezed his hand softly and he gripped her fingers tighter in return.

Exhaling deliberately and feeling the anxiety melt away, he marveled at how she’d known just how to assuage his guilt and remembered why their partnership had always worked. She was the strongest person he knew and always had been, even in the face of cancer, and he was overcome with gratitude.

Slowly, Scully withdrew her hand from his and stepped back, turning to walk to her room. He stood motionless, watching her leave, wishing for the hundredth time that day that he could have taken her into his arms. Stopping in front of her door, she turned back once more to look at him. “Good night, Mulder,” she said almost apologetically, almost as if she knew how much he needed her.

“Good night, Scully,” he answered quietly.

Then she was gone, and he was left standing in the middle of the courtyard. Listening to the rustle of the leaves from the woods behind the motel, he sighed, reluctant to go inside, not wanting to be alone in a small room, whether it was here or back in New Mexico. He looked up at the few stars that managed to poke through the clouds and breathed deeply. Although he certainly wouldn’t have called himself a praying man, he still found himself asking whomever might have been listening to allow him to stay, even if for just a little while longer.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything was dark when Mulder woke up the next morning, but it didn’t matter. Even before his eyes could adjust, the sound of cars streaming by on the wet highway told him he was still in the mountains instead of the desert. Jumping up and flinging open the heavy curtains just to be sure, he felt his heart lift as he stood in his boxer briefs and watched the rain fall steadily on the parking lot pavement. It was a beautiful day.

He walked into the bathroom and stopped short in front of the mirror. This was the first time he’d really looked at himself since the first shock of yesterday morning, and as he waited for the shower to warm up, he took a few moments to examine his image closely. There _were_ noticeable differences, he had to admit. His hair was longer now, and there were fewer lines on his face than he remembered seeing in his reflection two days ago. He shook his head and watched himself grin slightly. No wonder Scully hadn’t suspected anything the day before: he looked just the way he had in 1997.

Standing under the hot water, he thought about how easy it was to fool others into believing he belonged here. People simply took him at face value, just as they did with Eddie. But unlike Eddie, who seemed to have no problems tricking others for his own gain, Mulder wasn’t sure how his own identity crisis was benefitting anybody. Not himself, and certainly not Scully. Closing his eyes and breathing deeply, the caustic scent of generic shampoo filling his nose, he tried to once and for all banish the despondent thoughts that had plagued him last night. They wouldn’t help him, and now that he’d been given the gift of another day he was determined to make the most of it.

This meant, of course, finishing the case while making sure Eddie wasn’t the one hitching a ride home in his place, trying to cozy up to Scully. That’s my job, Mulder thought and then smirked, knowing how unlikely that was. The moment they’d shared in the courtyard had been familiar and comfortable, yes, but he wouldn’t have called it passionate. And that made sense because although from the beginning of their partnership they’d both found it natural to comfort each other with a hug or reach for each other’s hand for support, those kinds of responses had always been rooted in reassurance rather than romance. Until much later, at least. He was a bit disappointed, of course, because he longed for the connection he had with his Scully, but he figured this could still be a good chance to explore more of the purely platonic aspect of their relationship again.  

Mulder got out of the shower and grabbed a towel from the rack, tying it around his waist. As he used another to dry his hair, he heard the door to his room open.

A moment later, Scully called out to him. “Hey, I forgot to tell you earlier that I brought your bag. I’ll just leave it here on the bed.”

“Thanks,” he answered appreciatively, stepping out of the bathroom while still rubbing his hair. “I didn’t even think about bringing clothes for—“

“Mulder!” she yelped.

“What?” He was confused until he followed her gaze downward to the skimpy towel that he now noticed barely covered anything. “Oh,” he murmured.

As she averted her eyes and pretended to study an ugly painting on the wall, Mulder couldn’t help grinning. Even though he’d honestly forgotten for a moment that he wasn’t exactly presentable, he wouldn’t have expected that she’d be so flustered. After all, she _had_ seen him naked before.

“Gee, aren’t you supposed to be a doctor?” he teased, ducking back into the bathroom to save her from further embarrassment. “And used to studying the male form and all that?”

On the other side of the door, he heard her clear her throat and reply, “Yes, but a motel does not in any way qualify as a clinical setting.”

And he realized that it wasn’t necessarily his nudity that had thrown her off; it had been the intimacy of the moment, how casually he’d behaved as if they were a couple and accustomed to dressing (and undressing) in front of each other. Mulder felt a stab of guilt about that, especially since he’d just decided not to push for anything past friendship. But he also couldn’t help laughing to himself as he wondered how she’d react if she knew just how many times he’d made love to her in motel rooms like this one.

When they first started sleeping together, they’d attempted to follow the Bureau’s policy and stay professional while on assignment. But one evening, while out in rural California, Scully had knocked on his door and when he answered, she had immediately begun reciting the statistical improbabilities of someone finding out what they might be doing behind closed doors in small town America. He’d pulled her into his room, silenced her with a kiss, and they never worried about it again.

“Sorry, Scully,” he said. “I guess I was just really excited to have clean clothes.”

“Well, this will teach me to knock next time,” she said, and he relaxed when he heard a hint of amusement in her tone. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

As soon as he heard the door close, he walked back out to retrieve the suiter that he used to leave in his office, ready to go for overnight stays. He hadn’t seen Scully grab it on their way out; she must have noticed his complete lack of preparation the day before. Nothing got past her, he thought ruefully, taking his charcoal gray suit out of the bag. Well, almost nothing.

Walking out to the car, he dodged raindrops and quickly climbed in. He caught her eye and joked, “Can I at least buy you breakfast? Coffee? Donut, perhaps?”  

“Thanks,” she said with a grin, “but we’ll have to skip breakfast, I’m afraid. The station just called; it sounds like the deputy was knocked out cold last night. And Eddie is gone.”

 

*****  
  
  
After listening to the deputy complain that Eddie had hit him over the head and then somehow transformed into him, Mulder turned to Scully in triumph. “It looks like my theory was correct after all,” he couldn’t help gloating.

“Sure,” she agreed cynically, “I guess that means we should start searching the town for anyone who looks like the deputy.”

“Don’t forget, he can shape shift into anyone,” he reminded her. “Eddie could have turned into anybody by now. For all you know, _I_ could be Eddie.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” Mulder insisted. “It’s a real possibility.”

Scully sighed. “You’re not Eddie.”

“The point is that there wouldn’t be a way to tell the difference,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him playfully and stretched up on her tiptoes. Using both hands to bend his head gently down to hers, she pretended to examine him closely, so closely in fact that he could feel her breath on his cheek. He remained still as he inhaled the intoxicating scent that he’d recognize as pure Scully in any time or space and mused that even Einstein could never have imagined the paradox of missing someone who was standing right in front of him. After a few moments, Scully pulled back and smiled slightly while he worked to keep his expression neutral.

“Yep, I was right,” she pronounced with satisfaction. “You’re definitely you.”

Shaking his head a bit to clear it, he argued, “But that’s only because I look like me.”

“No, it’s because if you were Eddie, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place,” she pointed out with a smirk.

“Scully, you should be taking this seriously,” he murmured. Nothing was guaranteed, even with his foreknowledge, and he knew there was a chance that he could still end up in the hospital basement. “In fact, we should probably come up with some quiz questions, just in case.”

“Mulder…”

“No, really. We need to be ready in case he decides to impersonate me. I’d be a pretty good target since he knows we’re trying to arrest him.”

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “What’s my badge number?”

“JTT…. Hell, I don’t know your badge number,” he said in exasperation. “Do you even know mine?”

“I’m not the one with the supposedly perfect memory,” she grinned. “You’re not very convincing right now.”

“Come on, Scully. One more.”

“Okay, how about my birthday?”

“That’s too easy,” he objected. “Eddie could just look that up.”

She looked askance at him and asked, “So Eddie is not only shape shifting but also looking up information about me on the off chance I decide to quiz him about it?”

“Maybe. So just to be sure, you should come up with something from your life that he’d never be able to figure out,” he suggested.

“And am I supposed to ask you these questions every time we’re separated? When you leave to go to the bathroom, should I ask you who my twelfth grade boyfriend was when you return?”

She was just mocking him, he knew, but Mulder still felt a jolt of alarm. They’d talked about what their first times had been like one night while lying in Scully’s bed, their bodies entangled, their voices finding each other through the darkness. Her first time had been with a guy named Marcus whom she’d dated throughout her senior year, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to know that yet. He wondered uneasily if she were somehow actually trying to test him, as impossible as that sounded.

Deciding it was safer to ignore the second part of her question altogether, he answered, “No, not every time, just if anything seems off. You know, if I seem…” Even weirder than he’d been acting these past two days? He figured it was probably best not to bring that up.

“Mulder,” she said wearily, “I don’t need to quiz you. I _know_ you’re you.”

“But how will you know if I’m _not_ me?”

“I’ll know,” she said with conviction.

  
  
*****  
  
  
They pulled up across from Eddie’s house and Mulder grabbed the umbrella and got out of the car first. Since it was raining even more heavily now, he walked over to Scully’s side and opened the door, angling the umbrella and offering her his hand so she wouldn’t get wet as she stepped out.

She accepted it readily with a smile, and his confidence soared. Making friendly gestures was pretty easy after all. As they walked across the street, he felt Scully huddle against him, fitting herself under his arm. He sucked in his breath imperceptibly but ordered himself not to read into it. It could have been the rain, she could have had a chill, or there could have been some other practical reason for her to lean against his chest. In fact, she was probably just grateful for his help.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it further because at that moment, Scully asked, “Mulder, if you could be someone else for a day, who would it be?”

Mulder almost dropped the umbrella in shock. That had been his question to her the first time around. What was going on? Was the universe trying to mess with him? But why, since he was still following the original timeline, wasn’t he? He hadn’t gone out of his way to shake things up too badly; it wasn’t like he was trying to stop Osama bin Laden or anything. Yet. He guessed that this could be a warning to expect other things to randomly and unexpectedly change too. Even though that seemed to break the rules of time traveling, at least in popular fiction, anyway.

Or, he thought wryly, the universe could have been trying to caution him that interfering in events even in small ways meant that he risked returning to a world where everything was completely different. Maybe he’d discover that the super soldiers had given up on trying to destroy the world. Perhaps he’d find that the Smoking Man had keeled over from emphysema. If that was the case, then he certainly wasn’t going to worry about sticking to the script.  

“Mulder?”

“Um, Marty McFly.”

“It can’t be a fictional character,” she responded immediately.

“Tell that to Amanda Nelligan,” he said as they climbed the porch steps to Eddie’s house. “All right, then, Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Really? A woman?” she asked, trying to peer into the house.

“Why the hell not? It would be interesting to see things from a completely different perspective. What about you?”

She sighed and shook her head. “You really are a mind reader.”

The front door opened and they both turned as an older man gazed at them. “What are you doing sneaking around my porch?” he asked grumpily.

Scully held out her badge and said, “We’re with the FBI. Is this the home of Edward Van Blundht?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

Yeah, that was Eddie, Mulder thought, staring at him. “We’re looking for your son, Eddie Jr.”

Eddie invited them in and Mulder looked around while Scully explained the case. Stopping in front of the monkey poster, he suddenly thought of a way to get Eddie back into custody.

“Do you mind if we have a look around?” Mulder interrupted them.

Eddie and Scully both turned to him. “I guess so,” answered Eddie. He seemed caught off guard, exactly how Mulder wanted him.

“Good,” said Mulder. “Let’s all go upstairs together,” he announced, pushing Eddie to go first. Scully looked at him oddly while Eddie glanced away nervously.

“There’s nothing up there,” Eddie said.

“You’re probably right,” said Mulder. “But even so, I’d like to see for myself.”

“I, uh, don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Too bad,” Mulder said cheerfully, blocking the stairs so there was nowhere Eddie could go but up. “You already gave verbal assent. Let’s go!”

Once Eddie started climbing, Scully tugged his sleeve and asked, “What’s going on?”

Mulder turned back to her and whispered, “That’s him!”

“Who?”

“Eddie!”

“Where?”

He sighed and then hissed, “Eddie is pretending to be his father!”

Scully gave him a skeptical look. “How do you know that?”

“I figured it out. Just wait.”

Once all three of them made it to the second floor, Mulder walked right over to the trapdoor of the attic. “Stand back,” he warned Scully. Giving it a strong tug, the door flew open and the body of Edward Sr. came tumbling out. The three of them coughed as the quicklime settled around them.

“That’s Eddie Sr.,” proclaimed Mulder, pointing at the floor. “And he,” he continued, turning to the bewildered man, “is actually Eddie Jr.”

“How would you know that?” asked Eddie, alarmed.

“Yeah, Mulder, how _would_ you know that?” said Scully incredulously.

He shrugged. “Call it a hunch. Care to give yourself up?” he asked Eddie, who remained quiet.

“Just so you know,” Scully said firmly, “we’re only arresting this man for having a body in his attic, not because you think he’s Eddie.”

“Fine,” Mulder replied, reaching for his handcuffs. And then he stopped, realizing he didn’t have his handcuffs with him. Just like his bag, he hadn’t grabbed them from his office the day before. “Uh, Scully?” he asked sheepishly. “Could you? I don’t seem to have my cuffs today.”

Looking at him in confusion, she muttered, “What is going on with you?”

He turned to her and said, “Look, Scully, I—“

But as soon as he diverted his attention, Eddie immediately bolted down the stairs. Mulder couldn’t help but sigh. How was this still happening when he was supposed to have the upper hand the second time around?

Scully immediately darted after him, but Mulder followed more slowly, knowing it was futile. Sure enough, Eddie was out of sight by the time she made it out the back door.

“Where the hell did he go?” she muttered.

“He’s gone for now,” Mulder replied, catching up to her. “There’s no point in chasing a man who can morph into anybody and hide in plain sight.”

“If you say so,” she murmured. “Anyway, I need to get that body over to the morgue.” She looked at him closely. “Speaking of which, how did you know there was a body in the attic in the first place?”

He shifted uncomfortably under the weight of the other questions she didn’t ask as well: _Why didn’t you remember my cancer? Your handcuffs? The overnight bag? This case itself? Why do you look so much like yourself but act like somebody so different?_

When it was clear he wasn’t going to answer, Scully sighed and pulled out her phone. As she talked with the coroner’s office, Mulder debated with himself. He wanted to tell her, he really did. But then again, it wasn’t good timing with a dead body that needed an autopsy as well as with a rapist still on the loose. It would take too long to explain, and he would need some more time to prepare.

Of course, he recognized that these were all excuses. There might have been reasons not to tell her, but the biggest one was that he was afraid there was nothing he could say that would convince her, and he’d end up losing her trust in the process. He eyed her, talking crisply and professionally, and sighed heavily. Keeping secrets from her, he knew from experience, didn’t exactly engender trust either. It was an impossible situation.

When Scully finished on the phone she turned back to him. “I’ll have to head over to the morgue once they transport the body there. In the meantime, Mulder, how are we supposed to find a guy who, as you say, can blend in anywhere?”

“I guess we could try the hospital,” he said. Eddie wouldn’t show up there for a couple hours, but there was no way to know where he’d be hiding out until then. “He said something that made me think that Amanda—“

“What?”

Mulder suddenly recalled that back when he’d done this the first time around, he’d had an odd phone conversation with one of the infertility couples that had been Eddie’s victims. Fred Nieman and his wife had asked when they could get back into their bathroom and had also wanted to know what Mulder needed with Fred’s charcoal suit. He looked down at his own suit thoughtfully. Maybe the best way to stay out of the hospital basement was to avoid the hospital altogether.

“Actually, never mind about Amanda. I have a good idea where Eddie might be right now,” he said. “And I have a pretty good idea _who_ he might be too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Tomorrow, Mulder thought as he and Scully crept around the perimeter of the Neimans’ house. If he were still here, he’d have to tell her the truth. They’d be back in DC, so he envisioned taking her out to a nice restaurant and thoroughly explaining everything that had happened to him. But then again, asking her to dinner on a Saturday night might throw her off, so he mentally revised his plans to lunchtime takeout at her apartment.

All he needed was a time and a place without any distractions. She might not believe him at first, but with enough time, he was sure he could convince her that he wasn’t crazy. Then, if he remained here indefinitely, they could resume saving the world, only this time with his gift of foresight. He exhaled with relief. It was a good plan.

Mulder also felt positive about the plan he’d shared with Scully about how to catch Eddie. It was clear she was still skeptical about how he could predict Eddie’s next move, but after the requisite number of eye rolls, she’d agreed to the plan. He knew he was lucky to be able to count on any version of Scully to follow him, no matter how off the wall his theories seemed at first.

Examining the building critically, he noted with satisfaction that the windows weren’t the kind Eddie could escape from easily. There was also only one other door, around back. If they did this right, they’d have him cornered. Once he was reassured by their preparations, he motioned to Scully and the two of them walked around to the front. A few seconds after they knocked on the door Fred Neiman answered, looking perplexed.

“Weren’t you just…?” Fred asked, glancing back into the house.

So far, so good. “Yes, I left briefly to go meet my partner, Agent Scully,” Mulder said, gesturing towards her. “It turns out that the police are busy with another case, so we’re going to get the fingerprints.”

Scully stepped forward and said, “Mr. Neiman, I’d like to take you and your family to a neighbor’s house so we can avoid any contamination of evidence while we continue this investigation.”

A woman walked to the door and poked her head outside. “Sugar Patootie, what’s going on?” she asked, clutching her baby closely.

“Don’t worry, Baboo,” Fred said, turning to her. “The FBI just wants us to go next door while they dust for fingerprints.”

“Right now?” she complained. “I was going to put the baby down for a nap.”

“This should only take a few minutes,” Scully assured them.

Mulder shifted impatiently from one foot to the other; he didn’t want to give Eddie time to realize what was happening and escape out the back. Once Scully managed to finally convince them to leave, Mulder went in the house and closed the door, immediately barricading it with a heavy entryway table. At the very least, he’d hear if Eddie tried to move it.

Taking out his gun, he walked straight to the back door and saw with relief that the deadbolt was still locked. He flipped it the other way so Scully could enter after she’d gotten the Neimans settled and verified their identities. Moving quietly, he slowly pushed open the door to the bathroom, keeping an eye on the back door just in case Eddie tried to get past him. He also wanted to know when Scully arrived so he could be sure it was really her. It wasn’t Eddie’s usual modus operandi, but Mulder was determined to cover all of his bases.

A quick look told him the bathroom was clear. He backed noiselessly down the hall and searched both bedrooms, even pausing for a moment to study a sleeping cat stretched out on a queen-sized bed. As far as he knew, though, Eddie’s abilities didn’t extend to family pets, so he continued to the kitchen. Nothing. Could Eddie have somehow slipped past him?

Mulder backtracked towards the living room, eyeing the front door to make sure the barricade was still in place, and wondered if perhaps the past was trying to reassert things the way they were supposed to be. That would mean he was fated to meet Eddie at the hospital after all. Maybe it was impossible to change--

Something crashed loudly behind him, but before Mulder could fully register that the coat closet had opened, he spotted a blur out of the corner of his eye. He raised his arms to deflect a blow to the head and instead felt the impact on his wrist, knocking the gun from his hand. As he leaned over and tried to locate where it dropped, Mulder was struck in the shoulder, hard enough that the impact threw him backward onto the floor where he landed mere inches from the coffee table. Blinking rapidly, he looked up into the face of his assailant: himself.

The shock wasn’t unlike the one he’d experienced while looking in the mirror yesterday, watching it reflect back someone who was almost himself but not quite. This Mulder’s features were screwed up into a scowl while his body crouched into a menacing stance, clad in an almost identical suit and tie. Mulder grabbed a leg of the coffee table and struggled to sit up, but his doppelganger jumped on top of him, pinning him to the floor.

How in the hell had Eddie snuck into that closet without anybody noticing? Mulder shook his head and tried to feel his shoulder to make sure it was all right. He supposed he had to be grateful he hadn’t crashed into the table and lost consciousness, especially since he’d stupidly let his guard down. Eddie tried to hit him in the face a few times, but Mulder managed to grab ahold of his forearms instead, and they struggled for several seconds, neither of them able to gain the upper hand.

Whatever advantage Mulder had in knowing his own body better was negated by how weirded out he was to be wrestling with himself. If Eddie could transform into a Star Wars character, though, why wouldn’t he turn into the Incredible Hulk or something and seriously kick some ass? Mulder studied his lanky build dispassionately and concluded that Eddie was much dumber than he looked.

Telling himself to focus, Mulder managed to throw a punch of his own and watched his green eyes glint with frustration as Eddie rubbed his jaw. He took the opportunity to attempt to roll away, but Eddie grabbed at him, pulling the suitcoat right off his shoulders.

“Hey,” Mulder grunted as Eddie tossed the coat away and then shrugged off his own, throwing it on top.

Mulder had just managed to get out from under Eddie’s grasp, when Eddie started yelling. “Change back,” he shouted in Mulder’s face. “Change back into yourself!”

Rattled by the sound of his own voice, he stared at Eddie in confusion for a second until he heard a gasp and turned toward the sound. Scully stood in the middle of the living room, her gun drawn and aimed at the space between them, eyes wide, mouth fixed in a perfect oval of disbelief. Mulder had warned her that Eddie would most likely have morphed into him, but then again, walking into a room with two wrestling Mulders was not something one could truly prepare for.

_Well, Scully, it seems as though seeing IS believing._

“Stop,” she commanded shakily. “Hands where I can see them.”

Mulder raised his hands over his head and decided to give her a moment to recover before trying to explain. But Eddie immediately scrambled to his feet and took a step forward cautiously, his hands in the air and his eyes on the gun in Scully’s trembling hand.

“Scully, thank God you’re here. Eddie attacked me and almost took my gun,” Eddie protested, throwing a derisive look in Mulder’s direction.

Shaking his head, Mulder stood slowly. “He’s Eddie,” he said, pointing. “I can prove it.”

But as soon as he said it, he remembered both his wallet and his badge were in his suitcoat which was across the room on the floor. Mulder frowned and scrutinized Eddie. Had he anticipated Scully’s arrival? But it wasn’t even supposed to happen this way.

Eddie acted like Mulder hadn’t spoken. “I would have arrested him myself, but this is turning out to be the worst day ever to have forgotten my handcuffs,” he said, perfectly imitating Mulder’s sheepish expression from earlier.

“This is ridiculous,” Mulder muttered. Did Eddie actually think Scully wasn’t going to be able to tell them apart? He sighed. “Okay, Scully,” he said. “Listen to me: Your full name is Dana Katherine Scully. Your…”

He panicked, suddenly not able to think of anything else but her birthdate. Dammit, why hadn’t he made sure they settled on questions when they had the chance? “Your mother’s name is Margaret, you went to the University of Maryland, um…” Everything else that came to his mind seemed to have happened after 1997. Grasping wildly, he continued, “You used to have a dog named Queequeg but he, ah, got eaten by an alligator or possibly a lake monster, and you have two brothers, Bill Jr. and Charlie..."

“You looked all that up,” scoffed Eddie.

“Even the part about her dog? Fine, go ahead, if you think you can do better,” Mulder said, folding his arms across his chest and then on second thought, raising them above his head again.

They both turned to Scully who was still frozen in place. Her mouth wasn’t hanging open anymore but she still wore a dazed expression, and Mulder couldn’t be sure she’d heard anything they said. Eddie glanced sideways at Mulder and smirked before turning his full attention on Scully.

Mulder watched his own features soften and transform with love and concern for Scully, the same look he had consciously kept off of his face for two days so he wouldn’t scare her. Mulder relaxed slightly. Surely she would be alarmed at how out of character Eddie was acting.

“Remember last night?” Eddie asked her earnestly, taking another small step forward. “Remember what we said to each other?”

“Oh, please,” Mulder grumbled under his breath.

This was such bullshit. Or was it? It was on the tip of Mulder’s tongue to ask Eddie to repeat exactly what they’d said last night, but that might have proven dangerous. Was it possible that after escaping from the police station Eddie had hidden in the woods near the motel and listened to their conversation? Mulder was disgusted by the thought, knowing it was only a fraction of what the women felt once they found out about Eddie.

“It’s me, Scully,” Eddie continued softly, gazing into Scully’s eyes. “You know me. Trust what you’re feeling.”

There was no way this could work. In about three seconds, Scully was going to start laughing in Eddie’s face. But to Mulder’s surprise, she stared back at him for a moment and then bit her lip, thinking. He knew that look. She was buying it.

“Mulder?” she breathed, looking at Eddie, who nodded, a smile spreading across his face. Mulder watched the tension ease from her shoulders as she unconsciously moved towards Eddie.

“Scully, don’t,” Mulder pleaded. “He’s not me.”

She glanced briefly at him, wiggling her gun warningly in his direction, and then turned back to Eddie. “Arrest him,” she said, tossing her handcuffs to Eddie.

 

*****  
  
  
Mulder paced the length of the jail cell at the police station, exactly as he’d been doing for the last couple hours. In all of that time, he had been unable to come close to figuring out what the hell happened. How had Eddie managed to beat him again? It seemed impossible, especially since he’d gone into this armed with foreknowledge.

Of course, he had to admit it was precisely his foreknowledge that had gotten him into this mess. If he’d only let Eddie jump him at the hospital, he’d be in a makeshift basement cell right now, waiting for the nice security guard who’d heard his yells and let him out the first time. Instead, he was in a much more official jail this time around, and he doubted these guards could be persuaded to let him out any time soon.

He groaned as he realized he wouldn’t get back in time to stop Scully from making out with Eddie—or worse—now. It could be hours or even days before this was all straightened out and by then, Scully might have eloped into the sunset with Eddie Van Blundht. It was probably the worst case scenario, he acknowledged, but it wasn’t an entirely implausible one.

Mulder had no doubts at all that Eddie could charm the pantsuits right off of Scully. Look at what he’d done in five seconds for crying out loud. Eddie was good, he thought grudgingly. Better than he’d expected and obviously used to thinking quickly on his feet. Mulder sighed and collapsed on the cold bench, covering his face with his hands. This was a complete disaster. If there was ever a moment when he could have used a time machine, it was right about now.

“This is all my fault,” he moaned out loud.

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about myself,” a contrite voice replied.

He looked up and saw Scully standing on the other side of the bars, giving him a tiny and embarrassed smile.

“Scully!” Mulder cried, jumping to his feet and rushing over to her. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Don’t worry, he’s down the hall in booking.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Mulder. I was so sure I knew…it was stupid and reckless of me. I should have held you both until I’d gotten blood tests back. Or at the very least, I could have checked your identification.”

“I thought of that too, but since both of our coats were on the floor, I’m sure Eddie would have rushed to grab mine first to pass it off as his. After all, he somehow managed to be a step ahead of me with everything else,” he said bitterly.

“I know, and I’m really sorry. I was caught off guard, so when Eddie started talking to me, acting like…I just…I should have handled it differently,” she finished helplessly.

Mulder recalled that she’d blamed the almost-kiss with Eddie on the wine. Sure, in both instances her defenses had been down and Eddie had used that to his advantage. But as he watched a flush creep into her cheeks he began to understand why she kept falling for the same illusion.

“I should have handled it differently too,” he said quietly.

The guard finished his call to confirm the release, and Mulder gratefully exited his cell. After completing the necessary paperwork, the two of them made their way down the hall in silence until Mulder asked, “How did you figure out that he was really Eddie? Did you quiz him?”

“No,” she answered with a slight smile, “I knew as soon as he touched me.”

“He _touched_ you?” Mulder felt ill at the thought, but not too ill to begin immediately planning Eddie’s demise.

Scully made a face. “Not like _that_. God, Mulder, we were only alone for an hour or two, most of which was spent in a morgue. Anyway, I’d just finished performing the autopsy, and Eddie made some comment about Eddie Sr. that seemed like an odd thing for you to say. But I brushed it off.”

“So even after that, you still believed he was me because he looked like me,” he pointed out smugly.

“Well…yes. Especially since you’ve been acting a bit different than usual the last couple days.” He couldn’t help wincing, but thankfully she continued, “But then you… _he_ put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulders and said ‘thank you for knowing it was me.’ But it just didn’t feel right.” She hesitated for a second and then added, “He didn’t feel like _Mulder_.”

Warmth bloomed in his chest before he remembered that he wasn’t exactly feeling like himself either. Thinking back to her grasping his hand last night, leaning against him this morning, he asked, “I still feel like me, even though you don’t think I’ve been acting quite like myself?”

“Sure, like I said, feeling is believing.” Scully tossed him a triumphant look as she pushed a couple heavy doors open and walked outside toward their rental car.

Mulder trailed a few steps behind. He desperately wanted to know what she was feeling, but the first time he’d point-blank asked her where he fit into her life, she’d literally run away on a road trip with the Smoking Man. So instead he fell back on his usual tactic and teased, “Let me get this straight: you could tell from a simple touch on the arm that something was off, yet all of those other women were actually having sex with Eddie and…nothing?”

“Okay, fine,” she conceded with a grin. “I’ll admit it was easier for me to figure it out since I already knew there was a possibility I was wrong. So, to confirm, I looked into his eyes and—“

“And?”

Watching her struggle to come up with an explanation of how she knew, Mulder stood motionless beside the car, every nerve taut with anticipation, as he silently willed her to describe what she found, or didn’t find, in Eddie’s eyes that helped her decide.

But after a moment, she simply said, “And I arrested him and brought him over here. He knew he was caught and changed back into himself.” She shrugged. “Our part in the case is over, I guess.”

Scully moved to open the passenger door as if there were nothing more to be said on the subject, and Mulder knew if they drove away right now, they’d never mention this again. They would return to DC, talking about the weather on the drive home instead of what it meant to believe in a feeling. He remembered the rules; he’d practically written them.

“Not so fast,” Mulder joked lightly, blocking her path. “How do I know you’re really Scully?”

She returned his smile with sparkling eyes. “Wanna quiz me?”

“I think we’ve pretty much established that my method doesn’t work,” he answered wryly, “so I was thinking maybe we could try yours this time.”

With an air of confidence he didn’t feel at all, Mulder opened his arms, the invitation punctuated by a lopsided grin. Only when she readily stepped into his embrace did he remember to exhale.

He held her gingerly, as if they were at a junior high dance, unable to shut down his swirling and incessant thoughts, reminding him that he was also technically an imposter and at any moment she could realize this, that he’d promised himself he wouldn’t push anything with her and this seemed very much like crossing the line, that at this point in time they weren’t accustomed to holding each other unless they were scared, sick, or dying. So he was surprised to feel her arms wrap around his waist to pull him in towards her, molding her body against his.

Reflexively, he responded in kind: tangling his fingers in her hair, cradling her head against his chest. Hearing her contented sigh, Mulder forgot all of his doubts and worries, forgot the parking lot and the Earth itself; the laws of gravity disappeared, time became irrelevant. Only her hands pressed to his spine existed, only her breath on his heart. He brushed his lips against her forehead before he could stop himself, whispering her name in barely audible tones across her warm skin.

She looked up at him and he met her gaze. Staring deeply into her eyes, he watched the layers fall away and her expression open to him, filling with unguarded emotion. It was a look he knew so well, that he had longed for, that he’d missed every day for countless months. He felt his knees go weak and grasped her tighter for support as he let his mind catch up to what his heart already knew: he’d found her. He had been wrong to think of her as simply a past version of the real Scully. She was his, one and the same; his Scully had been here the whole time.

“It’s you,” he said in wonder.

“It’s me,” she affirmed in a whisper. 


	5. Chapter 5

Mulder followed Scully as she strode purposefully away from Skinner’s office without a backward glance, her heels clicking rapidly along the almost-deserted corridor. It was after 5pm, and Mulder could tell she’d already dismissed work from her mind for the weekend. And that meant she was most likely well on her way to mentally dismissing him until Monday morning as well.

He’d spent the entire trip back to DC pretending to concentrate on writing up the preliminary case notes on a very archaic laptop, all the while trying to figure out his next move. Every time he’d glanced over at her, trying to discern what she was thinking, she’d been completely absorbed in the drive, her eyes straight forward, hands poised in a perfect 10:00 and 2:00 stance.  He knew it was probably best to just let things happen the way they eventually would, but that was proving to be too damn difficult, especially when he kept replaying the moment they’d shared back at the police station.

As they approached the parking garage and prepared to go their separate ways, Scully inclined her head slightly toward him to nod goodbye as she kept walking, intent on locating her car. It was now or never. Or, he acknowledged, now or about two years from now.

“Hey, Scully,” he blurted without knowing what he planned to say next. She stopped so suddenly at his words that he tripped on her right heel, the force of it causing her leg to buckle.

“Ow,” she breathed, bending down to rub her foot.

 _Suave, Mulder._ “Sorry about that,” he mumbled and reached over to place his hand on her waist to help steady her.

“I’ll live,” Scully said lightly, straightening up to meet his gaze.

A warm and inviting smile, similar to the one he’d just spent the last several hours thinking about, ghosted across her features, giving him enough courage to ask, “So, what are your plans tonight?”

“I was thinking I could get some work in on that monograph I’m writing for the penology review,” she answered noncommittally.

“Oh,” he said, trying to hide his disappointment.

 Raising an eyebrow, she continued, “And I assume you’re going to get together with the Lone Gunmen.”

“The Lone Gunmen? Why assume that?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“It’s Friday, Mulder. Don’t you guys practically have a standing date?”

He nodded slowly, recalling that up until a couple years ago, he’d almost always spent the evening with Frohike, Langly, and Byers on Friday nights when he was in town. Experiencing a twinge of nostalgia, he briefly considered going to their place; after all, he didn’t know when he’d be able to see them again.

But he couldn’t pass up the chance to finally get Scully alone, without any interruptions. “We usually do,” he admitted, “but maybe instead…”  

“What?” she asked, distracted, peering around him to find her car.

“Why don’t you come over this evening?” he asked as casually as he could.

 Her eyes jolted back to his face and she squinted at him uncertainly. “Tonight? But we’re finished with the case.”

“No, not for work. I meant…to hang out.” Mulder didn’t know whether to feel amused or saddened by her amazement that he might want to spend time with her when they weren’t on the clock.

“But you don’t—” she stopped, flushing slightly.

“I don’t what?” _Ever ask you to come over? Choose you over the Gunmen?_

“Nothing.” Scully bit her lip and glanced sideways at him. “Just…why don’t you come to my apartment instead? You can meet me there in an hour.” She hesitated and then said, “Make that two hours.”

“Sure,” he replied, relieved. “Should I bring anything?”

“Wine, maybe?” she said tentatively. 

“Red or white?” he asked as if he didn’t already know her preferences by heart.

Her eyes danced in the dim light of the garage as she replied, “something sweet.”

 

*****  
  
  
Mulder showed up at her apartment exactly two hours later with a bottle of Beaujolais, which he’d selected because she had once remarked that drinking French wine made her feel sexy and flirtatious. Although now that he thought about it, she’d made the comment sarcastically and while in a bitter mood at nine months pregnant. Still, he figured it probably wouldn’t hurt.

Scully greeted him at the door wearing a V-neck sweater, form-fitting jeans, and a too-wide smile. As she took the bottle from his hands and led him to the couch, she spoke a bit too quickly and brightly than normal, and he realized she was nervous. Hell, he was nervous too and he was seventy percent sure she was into him. Looking around the living room, he noted the lit candles on the table, soft music playing on the stereo, and a fire crackling in the fireplace and mentally revised it to eighty percent sure.

Settling on one side of the couch, he watched as Scully set two wine glasses on the coffee table, poured a generous portion into each one, and then handed him a glass as she sat on the far end, leaving the middle cushion open between them. They faced each other in tacit appraisement until he held up his glass to her and she tapped it with hers.

While Mulder took a contemplative sip and watched her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, he tried to figure out what to say now that she was in front of him. Confessing his undying love seemed like the wrong kind of icebreaker, but he also didn’t want to get stuck talking about the weather. How did one start this conversation? _Do you_ like _like me, Scully? Circle yes or no_. Once the silence had stretched on for an uncomfortably long time, he decided to just go for it and say anything.

 “I was going to—,” he said.

“I meant to tell—,” began Scully simultaneously.

Mulder caught her eye and they laughed a bit at themselves, at how awkward this seemed, almost as if they’d been set up on a blind date. Gesturing to her, he said, “You go first.”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you how fascinating the autopsy was,” she began eagerly. “We found several more anomalies in the body that will almost certainly help explain how the chance combination of several genetic mutations converged to create Eddie’s transformation capabilities.”

Mulder caught himself before he made a face. Were they really going to drink wine in front of a fire and discuss work? _Yes_ , he answered himself, _because that’s all we used to talk about_.

“Sounds very interesting,” he replied sourly.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes, it is. Studying Eddie’s abilities could change the way we understand the whole field of molecular biology.” Scully swirled her wine pensively and continued with a wry smile, “We probably wouldn’t want geneticists to replicate the results, though, lest they unwittingly create an army of losers who begin picking up women under false pretenses left and right. Talk about lawsuits.”

“I’m not so sure that would happen, Scully,” Mulder contended. “Rare mutations don’t tell the whole story. For instance, if a hundred people were bitten by the same radioactive spider, do you think they would all become Spider-Man?”

“If we’re assuming radioactive spiders are real, I don’t see why not.”

“But the only thing they’d all have in common is spider-like abilities,” he pointed out, warming up to the topic despite himself. “That by itself doesn’t make anyone a superhero. Peter Parker only became one once he made the choice to use his ability to help other people.”

“Ah, so that’s where Eddie went wrong,” Scully remarked.

“Actually, I’m saying they’re more alike than it might seem. Eddie also chose to use his ability in a certain, specific way for maximum benefit. Plus, each of Peter and Eddie’s superpowers was a combination of their abilities and their natural gifts, and they both hid their true identities so nobody knew who they were underneath their superhero personas.”

“Eddie might have an intriguing ability, but I wouldn’t call it a superpower,” she said crisply. “And he’s definitely no superhero.”

Mulder shrugged. “So call him a supervillain instead. But consider how easily he deceived—seduced, really—every woman he targeted. If that’s not a superpower, I don’t know what is.”

Scully shifted uncomfortably and tipped her wineglass back, emptying its contents. “It shouldn’t have been that easy,” she murmured.

“It was only that easy because Eddie learned how to work his ability to his advantage. If his goal had been to act exactly like whomever he transformed into, that would have proved impossible,” Mulder said, the realization dawning on him only now. “He would have messed up the small details and raised too much suspicion. But Eddie didn’t need to focus on completely impersonating anybody; he just needed to be _better_ than they really were, idealized versions of those individuals, and that would be enough. Because just like people wanted to believe in Spider-Man as more than a kid in a handmade suit—“

“The women wanted to believe their husbands had simply become more romantic, attentive, and charming,” finished Scully.

“And don’t forget Amanda, who most likely got a more perfect and hopefully less whiny Luke Skywalker than in the movies,” Mulder added.

Scully paused to fill up her glass and after a few seconds commented, “I guess nobody is safe from falling for Eddie’s charm.”

“Even educated MDs do it,” he agreed.

“I suppose,” she allowed ruefully. Letting her eyes linger on him, she went on, “Though I am a bit surprised at myself, since I’d always thought I had a weakness for a less obvious kind of charm.”

Even though he knew how their story would eventually turn out, a thrill nonetheless shot through Mulder. “Yeah?” he asked hopefully.

She edged closer to him and he did the same so that they were both sharing the middle section of the couch that they'd both avoided earlier, and he draped his arm across the back cushion, almost grazing her shoulders.  

"Although you do seem to have turned it on high these past couple days,” she was saying.

That startled him; he thought he'd been so careful to hide his feelings. Well, until this afternoon, anyway, he conceded. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable, Scully,” he said, removing his arm from behind her head. “I can tone it down if you don’t like it.”

She took a long drink of wine and then said shyly over the rim, “I like it.” Shifting her weight so their thighs were touching, she brushed her fingers against his as she topped off his glass.

Yeah, Mulder thought, watching her in surprise, she _did_ like it. Holding her gaze while taking in her flushed appearance and shining eyes, he wondered how he'd never seen this, never noticed these kinds of obvious signs.

“And maybe that’s why I had a difficult time telling the two of you apart,” she went on, lightly tracing his knuckles, “because you’d already been acting like a more idealized version of yourself.”

He started to protest, “Yeah, but…” and stopped short, the unsaid words jangling painfully in this throat. _I’m no Eddie Van Blundht._ With a growing dread, Mulder realized that he _was_ in fact Eddie Van Blundht, only in the worst possible way. Hadn’t he also waltzed over to Scully’s apartment with a bottle of wine and the intention to woo her, all the while pretending to be somebody he wasn’t?

But now Scully was looking at him with an expression he knew so well, and a shiver coursed through his body, forcing everything else from his thoughts except the curve of her mouth. As her face drew closer to his and her eyelids fluttered shut, he moistened his lips in anticipation of the moment he’d been wanting ever since he’d been sucked back into this stupid case with Eddie. _Stop thinking about Eddie for just five goddamn minutes._ Mulder squeezed his eyes shut and tried to prevent his mind from overanalyzing, begged it to just let him enjoy this, and he’d make everything right, he promised.

Against his will, however, his brain insisted on calling up Eddie’s face, that idiot who’d thought he was so damn smooth, who’d also leaned forward eagerly toward Scully just like this, and suddenly it seemed as if Eddie had entered the room, that somehow Eddie was the one on the couch while Mulder again watched from the sidelines, watched from his mind’s eye, attempting to intervene. A rush of dizziness overwhelmed him, and he wondered if he would be able to stop it.

Mulder felt her breath tickle his cheek, and he again started to drift away under the influence of her warm, sweet scent. This was it. He parted his lips, inhaled softly, and heard himself whisper, “Wait.”

Scully’s eyes snapped open as she sprung back to her side of the couch. “I’m sorry, Mulder," she choked out.  "I—I thought…”

“I need to tell you something,” he mumbled.

She picked up a decorative pillow and held it against her chest, but otherwise she appeared calm, her eyes unreadable as she obediently waited.

“I’m not actually me. Not really,” he said, not looking at her.

“I think we’ve already exhausted that punchline,” she said, attempting to laugh but not quite making it there.

He was silent for a few moments and then felt her fingers under his chin, lifting his face so she could look at him. “Mulder?” she asked, worry in her voice.

“You trust me,” he stated.

“Of course."

“You've noticed that I haven’t exactly been acting like myself,” he began. “And that’s because,” he looked closely at her, trying to gauge her frame of mind, “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Okay,” she said with a resigned nod, “That's fine. We don’t...we can just…" She started to get off the couch, but he pulled her back down, keeping his hand on her arm.

“No, no, that's not what I mean.” He paused, trying to concentrate on how best to explain things, but at the same time he wondered why she was so quick to give up, so ready to give him an out. “Two days ago, I went to sleep in New Mexico but woke up the next morning in my apartment with no memory of how I got there. After a few confusing conversations with you, I realized that not only had I somehow traveled across the country but across time too." He broke off before adding, "Five years in the past, to be exact.”

Scully peered at him critically for a few moments. “What were you doing in New Mexico?” she finally asked.

He stared at her. “That’s it?”

“What’s it?”

“I just told you I traveled through time, and all you want to know is why I was in New Mexico?"

Leaning back against the couch, she said, “I'm just trying to absorb the information one piece at a time, Mulder. And that could be a clue."

“A clue as to how I got here or a clue as to how crazy I am?” he asked warily.

“I already know how crazy you are,” she deadpanned, “so I guess I’ll go with the first option.”

“The fact that this isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever suggested appears to be working in my favor,” he said, scrutinizing her.

“Maybe I’ve already used up my daily dose of incredulity,” she said wryly. “Besides, something is clearly off, and I suppose it’s a pretty good excuse as to why you…why we…um, why you got the date wrong in the write-up we gave Skinner today.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you wrote 1998 instead of 1997.”

“It was a typo.”

“Twice,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think Skinner noticed, though.”

“Time travel is hard,” said Mulder, sighing dramatically.

“I’m not so sure it could be time travel,” she said thoughtfully. “After all, you haven’t run into your past self while you’ve been here, have you? Instead, what you’re describing is more of a transformation. You _became_ your past self. Even if time travel were possible, that would be completely beyond the realm of even theoretical physics.”

That was something he hadn’t thought of before, but he had to admit it did make sense that if he’d actually traveled back through time, he should have traveled physically, not just with his mind. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “There should be two Mulders here.” He smirked. “Two _actual_ Mulders, I mean.”

"No thank you," she grinned. "One of you is quite enough."

“After today, I’d have to agree,” he said, rubbing his still-tender shoulder. “So, Doc, what’s your diagnosis, if this isn’t time travel?”

“You mentioned New Mexico,” she reminded him. “Maybe the Navajo had something to do with this.”

He shook his head, intending to disagree with her but then stopped, considering. He hadn't been in contact with the Navajo at all during the months he’d been in New Mexico, and even if he had been, the experiences of the last two days had been entirely unlike the dream world he'd experienced years ago at the hand of Albert Hosteen. That had been a world outside of time he remembered, and as soon as that thought crossed his mind, the words that his old mentor, Deep Throat, had spoken during the blessing way ritual came back to him: _I was first struck by the absence of time, having depended on it so completely as a measure of myself and my life, moving backwards into the perpetual night that consumes purpose and deed, all passion and will._

Was it possible that he was experiencing something like that again? Was he actually suspended somewhere outside of time while it only appeared that he had moved backwards?

"But this feels so real," he whispered.

"Maybe it's supposed to," Scully suggested. "Perhaps you need to believe in it for the illusion to work.”

“Believing is seeing, sure,” he said slowly, nodding. “But if that's true, I should wake up from the dream right now since we technically just broke the illusion.”

They both stared at each other for a tense moment, as if waiting for something to happen, and then Scully rolled her eyes and smirked. Mulder smiled in response, but in the back of his mind, he had to wonder if it hadn’t worked because he still wanted to believe in this illusion, in this more idealized world.

"This might be a case of too much wine," she said, gesturing to their empty glasses on the coffee table.

"It was a bottle, not a case,” he said with a grin. "I'm pretty sure nobody has ever hallucinated as a result of drinking a couple glasses of wine, Scully."

“You’re the one who's on a trip, not me.” She laughed to herself. “You know, this is definitely not the evening I had in mind when I invited you over. But I guess I should be used to this by now," she said affectionately.

"I told you everything is an X-file," he said pointedly.

"One that's not quite finished, as it turns out." Scully reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of his face as she turned serious. "Don’t worry, Mulder,” she said gently. “We'll figure this out.”

He caught her hand and held it to his face. He thought about his real life waiting for him; somewhere across time and space his aching, lonely existence would continue in her absence. Briefly closing his eyes at her touch, he wondered how to tell her that he didn't ever want to finish this. He didn't ever want to go back.


	6. Chapter 6

Mulder kept his eyes closed while he let the warmth from the fire and the wine flow through him, listening to the faint tones of “Ain’t it Funny How Time Slips Away,” on the stereo. He had to smirk to himself at that: Al Green had no idea just how slippery time could be. But the fact that he was sensing everything so acutely renewed his hope that this was actually happening; dreams and visions never appeared so vivid or intense.

He brushed his fingers against Scully’s cheek to reconfirm that the soft skin beneath his hand wasn’t an illusion, and she responded to the brief caress by settling herself alongside his shoulder, tilting her head into the curve of his neck. As he pressed his nose to her hair, inhaling her distinctive fragrance, he marveled at how all of this seemed so comfortable, so normal, almost as if the intervening years had disappeared.

“Of course,” she said with a contented sigh, “I wouldn’t mind it too much if this Mulder happened to stick around for a while.”

Even as his spirits lifted at Scully’s words, he was amused by what they implied. Unable to resist teasing her, he looked down at her and asked, “Oh, yeah? And what’s so wrong with _your_ Mulder?”

 “That seems like a loaded question,” she answered with a smile in her voice. “I only meant that this...” she paused and then gestured between them, “…this is—“

"Wasting time you could be spending with the phrenology review?" he suggested.

“ _Pen_ ology, Mulder, and that's not what I meant at all,” she said, giving his shoulder a good-natured nudge. “No, it's just that we don't...or, rather, the other version doesn't—"

“Have the ability to bet on sports and become a millionaire?" He shook his head, drawing the corners of his mouth down into an exaggerated pout. "Damn, I knew I was forgetting to do something."

“Are you finished interrupting yet?” Scully asked, narrowing her eyes at him playfully.

Mulder planned to reply with another smartass remark, but she stopped him by lightly pressing two fingers to his mouth. Caught off guard, he simply nodded instead, the movement causing her fingers to rub softly against his lips. Yes, he was definitely done interrupting her.

He looked deeply into her eyes and could tell by the way her expression changed that everything he’d ever felt for her now showed plainly on his face. But rather than turn away as he’d done before, Mulder let all of his suppressed emotions burst forth, letting her see what time had created between them, how the unconditional trust, faith, and belief they’d always had in each other had ultimately transformed their relationship. And as he did, he was drawn into her gaze as well until they were both wholly absorbed in a silent exchange of understanding and devotion, culminating in a perfect pas de deux of their minds.

Eventually, he removed her fingers from his lips, kissing each as he did so, smiling into her palm when her eyes widened. Without breaking contact, Mulder smoothed the hair back from her cheek and cupped the back of her neck, intending to draw her closer, but she was already there: eyes closed and mouth upturned as if she knew how to find him by heart.

His thumb traced her jawline as he leaned in and gently skimmed his lips across hers, tasting the red wine sweetness of her breath. Scully moved her mouth against his, her lips softer and fuller than he remembered, and as their kiss intensified, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, drawing him closer until there was nothing left between them. Feeling her heartbeat against his chest, her hands in his hair, Mulder could understand the stories he’d heard of people lost in the desert who’d somehow been able to trick their bodies into going without water for weeks, not realizing just how close they’d come to dying until they finally felt the first drops of liquid relief on their tongues.

They slowed down, exploring and tasting as if they had all the time in the world, lost in the discovery of each other until they reluctantly parted, gazing at each other in mutual reverence. Mulder stretched out on the couch and gently tugged Scully down next to him, not wanting to break their connection. She curled up into the crook of his arm and they lay facing each other, quiet and content.

“I’m glad you managed to stop interrupting,” Scully commented after a few moments, looking at him from under her lashes.

“Second time’s the charm, I guess,” he agreed, grinning back at her.

"Is that what you think this could be?” she asked pensively. “A second chance to make things right?”

“Maybe,” he replied with a shrug. “Hell, with a third try, maybe I’d even figure out how to avoid jail, too.”  

Scully wrinkled her nose. “But why even bother going back to West Virginia at all? If this is a chance to redo a part of your past, why waste so much time on something I assume doesn’t affect your life in the long run?”

“It did cross my mind to ditch the case, but I felt I needed to stick to the original timeline as closely as possible. Then again,” he added, dropping a kiss on her temple, “when it came to things that affected my life, I might have changed a few small details along the way.”

She hesitated a moment, forehead creased in thought, before asking, “There were only a few small things you wanted to change?”

“I’ve watched enough sci-fi to know that if you try to mess too much with time, it just messes with you right back,” he said.

“But were you fine with keeping most things the same, regardless if you thought you had to?” she persisted.

He shook his head at her in mock disapproval. “I see what you’re doing here, Scully. You do realize that if the tables were turned, I’d be on the receiving end of a lecture about how knowing too much about the future could disrupt the entire space-time continuum, right?”

“I thought we agreed that everything about this adventure you’re on disrupts the space-time continuum,” she pointed out dryly.

“Fair point,” Mulder conceded, “but the space-time continuum isn’t what I’m most concerned about anyway.”

Reaching over to smooth a lock of hair behind her ear, Mulder exhaled heavily. He wasn’t about to depress her by filling her in on their bleak future full of loneliness and uncertainty. If there had been some sort of endpoint in sight he might have considered it, but how could he tell her he had no idea when he’d see her again, if ever? He gazed at her sadly. No, if it hurt just thinking about the future, there was no way he could share it with her.

All of a sudden, he felt Scully go still beside him, and as he looked closely at her pale, drawn face there was no trace of humor left in her eyes as she searched his anxiously. And he realized: she believed him. She may have indulged him at first, might have even theoretically accepted that he was somehow actually experiencing the past again, but now, in this moment, she was certain he knew the future. Her future.

“Scully…” he began, but she cut him off immediately.

“No, Mulder,” she said quietly. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she regarded him with concern and reached over to touch his hand in reassurance. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m fine.”

“Yes.”                                                                                                                                    

She glanced at him quizzically.

“You’ll be fine,” he added. “We found a cure for your cancer, Scully. You’ll make a full recovery.”

As he watched her absorb the meaning of his words, anxiety and tension visibly leaching from her body, he recalled her telling him that even worse than the prospect of dying was the knowledge that she’d be leaving so much behind, so much unfinished. With a sigh, he sat up and pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair as she leaned into his chest.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” she admitted, her voice muffled by his sleeve. “Ever since yesterday you’d been looking at me like I was a…like you hadn’t seen me in a long time. And just now, when you looked so upset…”

He pursed his lips together and shook his head. “You’re right, Scully, I hadn’t seen you in a long time, and I missed you, but for a completely different reason.” Knowing he couldn’t keep it from her any longer, he took a deep breath and continued, “I didn’t just go to New Mexico; I had to escape there after I learned my life was in danger, and I’ve been hiding out there in the desert for the past year. The only chance I have of ever returning home is if I find answers, something that will eliminate the threat, but I haven’t come close to discovering anything yet. And in all this time, you and I have barely been able to communicate because it’s too dangerous, and the uncertainty of it all is killing us.” He sighed and finished helplessly, “Just like it almost did with your cancer.”

Mulder expected her to agree, but as she raised her head to look at him, her eyes were bright and filled with renewed intensity. “Uncertainty’s awful, but it doesn’t kill,” she said. “As long as we’re standing, we can keep going.”

“It doesn’t get any easier,” he murmured.

“I wouldn’t expect it to,” she replied crisply. “But I do know that no matter what you’re facing in your time, and whatever I’m going through as well, we can do it. After everything we’ve been through, we can get through that too.”

“But you don’t even know the—“  

She continued with easy conviction, “I know your Scully feels the same way because I can’t imagine feeling any differently in five years, ten years, or even twenty years.” She laced her fingers in his and gave them a squeeze. “You’re the one who taught me to keep going, Mulder. I’ve never given up because you never have. And we never will.”

Mulder took in her look of fierce determination and wondered if he would ever learn to stop underestimating her strength of spirit and mind. “I had no idea my girlfriend was Wonder Woman,” he said in awe.

“Girlfriend?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Future girlfriend,” he amended with a grin.

“I probably could have guessed that,” she replied, returning his smile.

“He loves you too, you know,” he said, “your Mulder. He just hasn’t figured out yet how to tell you.”

“That’s okay,” she said shyly, “Neither has this Scully.” She paused and then bit her lip, flushing slightly.

“What?”  

“Does this mean we’re…? I assume we’ve…?”

He laughed gently and pulled her head to his chest, covering her ears, and said dramatically, “One mustn’t speak of such things, my unmarried Catholic coworker.” He swept her hair back from her ear and bent down, whispering, “But we do have a son.”

She lifted her head quickly to stare at him. “ _We_ have a son?”  

“We do,” he confirmed, grinning at her disbelief. “His name is—“

“William,” she answered thoughtfully.

Now it was his turn to be surprised. “You’ve already thought about what you’d name your son?”

“No,” Scully replied with a slight smile, “I thought about what we’d name _our_ son.”

Mulder briefly closed his eyes as every memory of his son flashed through his mind, unable to find the words to convey how incredible it had felt to hold his own child for the first time, to watch William stretch and yawn and make faces in his sleep. How he’d finally torn his eyes away to find Scully gazing at both of them with an expression of pure love, realizing in that moment he had a family again.

“I never knew,” he said inadequately.

“If you recall, we haven’t exactly made it to the let’s-have-a-baby discussion yet,” she said wryly.

“Right, I remember that conversation well,” Mulder said with a nod. He took her hand, entwined in his own, and kissed it in gratitude. “I meant I never knew how much I wanted to be a father until I became one.”

“I wasn’t always sure I wanted to be a mother either,” Scully admitted, “but I knew if I did, you’d be the father.” She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, murmuring, “I can’t wait to meet our baby.”

Mulder folded her into his arms and tucked her head under his chin as he swept the hair back from her face. “He’s nearly a year old already, and I miss him as much as I miss his mother,” he said softly. “I may not know why I’m here or how this is even possible, but I do know that it’s been such a reprieve to see you again. I needed this. I needed you.”

“I need you too,” she replied, and something in her tone made him pause and look down at her.

 Mulder recognized at once the mixture of intensity and desire in her eyes as she gazed up at him, the same penetrating look that had first captured his imagination years ago. He felt something stir within him as her shallow breaths caressed his face from just centimeters away and so without further thought, he darted forward, his hands at her waist, his mouth crashing onto hers. Scully eagerly responded, tilting her head and parting her lips to deepen the kiss. This time, they were anything but slow and relaxed, and he could feel the heat gathering between them as she gripped the back of his neck harder. Thus encouraged, Mulder plunged his tongue into her mouth, bold and insistent the way he knew she liked it, and moved his hands up her back. Grabbing two fistfuls of her hair, he tugged firmly while he kissed her hard until she moaned into his mouth, the vibrations rippling through his body.

When he leaned away from her to catch his breath, he heard her hum in frustration, and Mulder chuckled softly, enjoying the effect he was having on her. Scully arched an eyebrow at him and traced her tongue slowly over his lower lip before rolling it playfully between her teeth as her hands traveled to his chest. Running her nails lightly across his pecs and abs, she then paused to play with the hem of his shirt for a few seconds, and Mulder, a bit awestruck as he watched her, found himself helping her lift it over his head. She kissed him every inch as fervently as he’d done a moment ago while she allowed her fingers to drift over his skin until they trailed almost carelessly down the length of his torso and lingered at the waistband of his jeans. Mulder broke away with a gasp, every nerve on high alert, and Scully twitched her mouth into a mischievous grin at his reaction, leaving no doubt as to where this was heading.

But was that such a good idea? Even though he wanted her to keep going—God, how he wanted her to keep going—Mulder wondered if, after all the emotions they’d been through already this evening, it was best to stop so they wouldn’t complicate things more. Plus, there was her cancer: even if she seemed fine, he didn’t want to risk hurting her. But when he looked to ask if she was sure, he noticed her whole being seemed infused with palpable joy as if she’d just won the lottery. Or, rather, received a new lease on life. With her cheeks flushed in excitement, fire in her eyes, never had she looked more like she did the first time they made love, and his heart surged even as he felt his own desire rising.

“I need you,” Scully repeated breathlessly in answer to his tacit question. To punctuate her response, she took her sweater off, revealing a black satin bra trimmed with pink lace underneath.

All of Mulder’s doubts fell away, and he grasped her hips with both hands, reacquainting himself with the softness of her skin, the curves of her body. Pulling her closer to him, he slowly ran his tongue over the delicate curve of her neck and across her collarbone. Scully’s breathing quickened as his hands lightly glided over the sides of her breasts several times; with each pass he gradually moved in a bit closer until he was touching them more fully. Her breath hot on his neck as his fingertips skimmed over her taut nipples straining through the silky material.

Mulder turned his attention to her shoulders, running his hands lightly over her arms as he drew the straps down. His mouth found her lips again as he reached around to undo the clasp, cupping her breasts as they spilled free. Scully arched her back, pushing herself against his hands, but he didn’t need to be told what she wanted. He dragged a thumb across her erect nipple, rolling it between his fingers and pinching it slightly. She exhaled sharply, and their eyes locked before he bent down and sucked her nipple gently, flicking his tongue against it until she threw back her head and groaned.

As he gave the same attention to her other breast, Mulder realized she had unzipped his jeans and was pulling them off. He raised his hips off the couch so she could slide them down his legs and then felt the slight touch of her fingers over his boxers. Shockwaves coursed through him, and he gasped when she reached through the opening and began rubbing him with purpose. Although he still concentrated on her breasts, he was growing harder by the second as Scully increased the pace. Just as quickly as she’d started, though, she suddenly removed her hand. 

“Bedroom?” she whispered.

Mulder could do no more than nod as he watched Scully stand up and, conscientious as ever, walk around the room to blow out the candles, admiring the view of her breasts as she moved. After she closed the grate to the fireplace, she walked to her bedroom and beckoned him with a smile and the tilt of her head. She’d left the lights off, but he absolutely wanted to see what happened next, so he paused at the threshold to adjust the dimmer switch until the room was bathed in muted tones.

When he turned toward the bed, he saw that Scully was lying on top of dark blue sheets, waiting for him, clad in only black and pink bikini panties. Mulder knew she rarely wore matching sets anymore, so he appreciated the effort, realizing that she had at least hoped this might happen. He climbed onto the bed and lay next to her, drinking in her beautiful body and how her pale, creamy skin contrasted with the small triangle of dark fabric she still wore. Her own gaze slid down the length of his body and back up to his face, her eyes hooded in lust.

“Hey, beautiful,” he whispered.

Smiling, Scully leaned over to kiss him, pushing her breasts into his chest, and Mulder ran his hands down her body, cupping her butt to pull her even closer. She responded by rocking her hips toward him, grinding slightly against his bulge. He groaned at the sensation of her entire body pressed against him, and he held her there for a moment, feeling her tremble.  Shifting slightly away from her, he gently touched her stomach, making small circles as he made a trail down to her panties. Mulder briefly stroked her over the silky material, the warmth and moisture apparent through the satiny material, and then dipped two fingers below her waistband.

Mulder heard her breath catch as he parted her slickened folds and slid his fingers between them, and Scully opened her thighs so he could touch her more fully. He slipped a finger into her, hearing her murmur another assent in his ear, and thrusted a few times, lightly brushing his thumb against her clitoris before withdrawing completely. Once he did, her familiar musky scent filled the bedroom which heightened his own arousal. Scully started to protest at the loss of contact, but he coaxed her on her back, settling himself between her legs.

Taking his time, Mulder kissed the inside of one thigh all the way to the edge of her panties, listening to her breath hitch, and then he abruptly switched to her other leg, slowly kissing up to her center. He touched the tip of his tongue to the damp fabric, inhaling deeply as he looked up at her face to see her eyes closed in ecstasy. While he pulled her panties to one side he licked her outer lips, and then pushed them the other way to lick the other side. Scully moaned and wriggled her hips, trying to move his mouth onto her clit.

“Not yet,” he murmured into her skin, smiling as she shuddered.

Mulder slowly peeled her panties down her legs and then spread her lips with his fingers, licking in small circles. He sucked on her inner lips, taking care to avoid what she wanted most until she was balling the sheets in her hands, her breath coming in rapid pants. Placing his bottom lip just under her clitoris, he gently fluttered his tongue from side to side against it, creating pulsating sensations. Scully began to whimper in pleasure and Mulder grinned. There was nothing sexier than watching her squirm in front of him, on the verge of an orgasm. He reached up to caress and lightly pinch her nipples, and then took her clit between his lips and sucked gently as Scully’s legs quivered and squeezed his head as she arched her back, gasping, her face contorted in bliss.

“Oh my God, Mulder,” she sighed.

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed, flopping back down beside her.

After a moment, Scully sat up and reached for him. “Your turn,” she said with a smile.

Mulder watched as she pulled his boxers off and took his throbbing cock in her hand, rubbing the length of him slowly from base to tip. Leaning back, he groaned as a thousand sensations coursed through him at once. Scully bent over and began licking the sensitive tip as she kept pumping his shaft, and he swelled against her hand. When he felt her lips wrap around the head, propping himself on his elbows so he could watch her take him into her mouth, he knew he wasn’t going to last long.

Allowing himself just a few more seconds of pure ecstasy, he finally made himself sit up, and raised her up as well, leading her to the edge of the bed. Mulder stood over her and their eyes locked as she spread her legs for him.

“You’re perfect,” Mulder sighed, and eased halfway into her, allowing her time to adjust to him. Her warmth and wetness engulfed him, reminding him that this was where he belonged: sharing time and now space with her. He slowly sank the rest of the way in with a sigh, relishing the feel of her muscles clenching around him. Scully smiled up at him and once again he was overcome with emotion for this woman he’d always loved and always would.

They moved together, finding a common rhythm, his slow thrusts answered by the resplendent movement of her hips to meet him. He leaned forward to kiss her, and she ran her hands through his hair. Everything was exquisite: the warm tightness enveloping him, Scully’s lips on his, their chests pressed tightly together.

After a couple minutes of this languid lovemaking, he raised himself up to look at her and saw that although she was enjoying herself, she assumed that since she’d already climaxed, the focus would be on him. Mulder could feel his own orgasm building, but he wanted her to come, too. He slowed down even more and whispered into her ear, “Touch yourself, Scully.”

She hesitated, as he’d expected she would, so Mulder took her fingers and guided them to her sex, his hand on top of her. Starting gradually, he helped her make small circles around her clitoral hood, showing her what she needed. After a few moments, Scully sighed and sped up the motions, and he could feel her inside walls become slick once more.

He increased the pace as well, gliding more easily into her now, and as he picked up her legs and placed them around his waist, Scully kept rubbing, eyes closed and moaning in earnest. Watching her touch herself as his cock moved in and out of her, her breasts bouncing wildly, her face scrunched up in ecstasy almost put him over the edge right there.

When she shifted closer to the edge of the bed so he could thrust even more deeply, Mulder lifted her legs over his shoulders and, making sure he was angled correctly, pulled out almost all the way and then slammed his cock into her. Scully’s eyes flew open in surprise and then pleasure as he did it again, burying himself completely in one motion. “Right. There. Just. Like. That,” she hissed as she braced herself against his thighs. 

Mulder pounded into her, grunting with each thrust as his hips slapped against her ass. Scully’s moans became high-pitched while the headboard banged against the wall, and Mulder briefly wondered whether her next-door neighbor was the same lady who used to hit the wall right back when they got too loud.

“Yes, Mulder, almost there!” Scully cried out, and Mulder could feel his balls tighten at her words.

Gathering his remaining strength, he drove into her hard and deep, and as he felt Scully’s muscles clamp down violently around his cock, his world burst into pleasure, waves of it overtaking him, and he spasmed inside of her until his legs gave out and he collapsed halfway on top of her.

For a few moments, the only sound was their ragged breathing. Then Scully pushed herself up on her elbow to look at him. “That was amazing, Mulder,” she sighed.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I don’t even think I can move.”

“I can’t believe we’ve never done that before.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Technically, we still have a couple years to wait before we do.”

“Well, we’re going to have to change that,” she declared. “Seriously, you were incredible. I don’t ever orgasm like that.”

“I’ve had plenty of practice,” he shrugged, smiling. “With you, I mean,” he added once he saw the look on her face.

She shook her head, trying to suppress a grin, and tossed his boxers at him as she walked into the bathroom. Mulder flopped on his back and stretched like a cat, feeling completely satisfied for the first time in a year. He’d just managed to pull on his boxers when Scully, now wearing an oversized t-shirt, opened the bathroom door so she could talk to him as she stood at the sink.

“Any more surprises like that I should know about, future boy?”

“Hmm…” he pretended to think. “Let’s see…you dyed your hair blond and started calling me ‘Fox’, but nothing too surprising.”

She stopped brushing her teeth to stare at him. “That…didn’t happen.”  

He grinned and she rolled her eyes.

“Just as long everything else you said is true,” she said, shaking her toothbrush at him.

“It is,” he assured her, heartened by how she could find optimism, even joy, in the prognosis of an otherwise tenuous future.

Scully switched off the bedroom and bathroom lights, and everything went black. He felt her slip into bed next to him, and they reached out for each other. Mulder wrapped himself around her, gratified by the closeness he always felt towards her after sex as well as content in the knowledge that no matter what happened in any timeline, he was hers and she was his.

“I love you, Scully,” he said, his words slicing through the darkness.

He felt her hand caress his face as she whispered, “I love you, too.”

Mulder reached up and squeezed her hand and after a few moments, he heard her breathing deepen, felt her body relax in his arms. He wanted to hold her like this all night, but unfortunately, his bladder disagreed. He started to disentangle himself from her, but she tugged him back down.

“Stay here,” Scully commanded sleepily.

“I will,” he promised, “I just need to go to the bathroom.”

“Hurry back to me,” she said with a yawn and closed her eyes.

He slid carefully out of bed so as not to disturb her. As he smoothed the blankets over her, he lingered a moment, watching the soft movements of her breathing. Reluctantly, he turned to leave and almost immediately smacked into a wall.

“What the hell?” Mulder muttered.

He rubbed his forehead and tried to think. Although the room was dark, he knew Scully’s apartment as well as his own, and there had never been a wall there before. He tentatively reached out to feel the space where the doorway should have been and again hit a wall. Confused, he spun around to regain his bearings only to become more disoriented when he realized the bed had rotated and moved to the far corner somehow. Suddenly nauseous with equal parts vertigo and dread, Mulder rushed across the room and frantically flipped the sheets and blankets off the bed despite the fact he could tell right away that the beautiful woman who’d been there just moments before was gone.

“No,” he whispered, staring at the empty bed before tearing his eyes away to scan the rest of the sparsely furnished room that he’d come to call home over the past year. “No, no, please, no,” he pleaded over and over to the universe until it became clear he lacked the right words to pray the past back into existence. He doubled over as loss ripped through him, pulsating in time with his broken heartbeat.

Nobody had given him a playbook, but Mulder had assumed this—whatever it was—would have ended like it began: waking up the next morning to find everything was different again. Not on the way to the goddamned toilet. He straightened up and shakily walked to his own bathroom even though he no longer felt the need to go, seeking yet fearing confirmation of what he already knew.

Gritting his teeth, he flipped on the light and forced himself to look into the mirror. A cursory glance told him everything he needed to know, and as the last sliver of hope left his body like a sigh, he sagged against the door for support. After a moment, he lifted his eyes again to study his reflection helplessly, and an older, sadder Mulder stared back in tacit acknowledgement.

Had any of it been real? Mulder shook his head slowly as he tried to sort it out, watching his image do the same. He supposed it could have been some sort of extended delusion, but didn’t weird visions occur _after_ people hit their heads? Not to mention he’d had plenty of sex dreams starring Scully throughout the years, but none of them had felt remotely like _that_. He mentally reviewed the evening, five years and fifteen minutes ago, and realized that although he could clearly recall how both versions had gone, nothing else had changed in his past. As far as their past selves were concerned, everything had occurred exactly as it had the first time, only now he’d gained this new set of memories.

That only made the whole experience all the more baffling, though. What had been the point of reliving those particular two days of the past, anyway? If he hadn’t been able to change or remember anything, hadn’t it just been a huge waste of time? He sighed and ran his hands over his face, wishing Scully had at least been able to wake up the next morning with a sense that everything would be okay, even if she hadn’t been able to remember all the details. Was that really too much to ask? He sank heavily onto the toilet seat lid and scoffed derisively at himself. Obviously, there was no sense dwelling on any of that now; even though he still felt linked to the past, all of that had been resolved years ago.

Besides, Mulder reminded himself, Scully hadn’t needed his reassurance anyway. She’d been so calm the entire time, so put together that he hadn’t even remembered her cancer at first. Mulder shook his head. He was the one who needed a message from the future, not her. Where was his future Scully to tell him about the wonderful life they were living in five years’ time? Remembering the look of relief on Scully’s face when she’d learned about her cancer, the joy when he’d told her about William…he knew how much it would have lifted his own spirits and renewed his motivation if he could have received similar guarantees about how the hell he was ever going to get through this.

Mulder braced himself as another wave of heartsickness washed over him. Facing an uncertain future was terrible enough, but it was ten times worse to do it alone. If only Scully could be here to tell him it would be okay. Closing his eyes, he let her words from earlier that evening wash over him again, imagining she were still here to say them.

_As long as we’re standing, we can keep going._

The same warmth from earlier flowed through him, recognizing it as the connection he’d shared when he held Scully in his arms, and he realized he didn’t need a message from the future because he’d already received it from the past. Mulder thought of how strong and determined she’d been even while she thought she was dying of cancer, how she’d told him she kept going because of him, and he felt chagrined that he’d allowed his loneliness to paralyze him into inaction for so long. After all, he hadn’t found a cure for Scully’s cancer by wallowing in self-defeat. Only by fighting through the despair, only through taking a risk, had they managed to find answers.

Mulder stood up and focused on his reflection again, this time barely registering the differences between his past and present selves. Instead, he noticed his expression, no longer completely defeated; now there was a glint of determination in his eyes. He picked up the bar of soap on the edge of the sink and wrote “DON’T GIVE UP” in large letters across the mirror and then stepped back to admire his work. Maybe he really had needed to travel back to a similar period of his life when he’d felt he was losing everything to remind him that he and Scully had been at this sort of precipice before, looking hopelessly into the void, but somehow they had always found the a way to overcome it.

Closing his eyes again, Mulder let his mind wander across the miles this time instead of the years, imagining Scully asleep in the bed he’d just left minutes before. He pictured her waking up in the morning, feeding William, going about her day, knowing that they’d keep going because they’d already been through so much and had always come through it. It wasn’t that she was fearless or immune to despair; she just carried on in spite of it all, whether it was facing a terminal diagnosis or raising their child on her own. What’s more, she had full faith in him that they’d pull through this. He knew this; he could still feel her, feel the connection they shared through their common pursuits.

 _Hurry back to me_ , Scully had said. It was the least he could do in return for all she’d given him. He could get up, get on with things, find his answers so he could return to her.

 _Don’t worry, Scully_ , he vowed to his own reflection. _I’m coming home_.


End file.
